There can be no doubt that *expediency and right coincide*. Under the government of Supreme Benevolence, it is impossible that what ought to be done should not conduce to the welfare of him who does it. But its beneficent results may be too remote for him to trace them, nay, may belong to a life beyond death, to which human cognizance does not reach; while what ought not to be done may promise substantial benefit so far as man’s foresight extends. Then, too, it is at least supposable that there may be cases, in which, were they solitary cases, expediency might diverge from right, yet in which, because they belong to a class, it is for the interest of society and of every individual member of society that general laws should be obeyed. It is obvious also, that there are many cases, in which the calculation of expediency involves details too numerous and too complicated to be fully understood by a mind of ordinary discernment, while the same mind can clearly perceive what course of conduct is in accordance with the strict rule of right. Still farther, in a question of conduct in which appetite, desire, or affection is concerned, we cannot take as calm and dispassionate a view of our true interest, as we should of the interest of another person in like case. The impelling force may be so strong, that for the time being we sincerely regard it as expedient—though we know that it is not right—to yield to it.
For these reasons there is an *apparent conflict between the useful and the right*. Though a perfectly wise and dispassionate man might give precisely the same answer in every instance to the question of interest and that of duty, men, limited and influenced as they are, can hardly fail in many instances to answer these questions differently. The man who makes his own imagined good his ruling aim does many things which he would not defend on the ground of right; the man who determines always to do right sometimes performs acts of reputed and conscious self-denial and self-sacrifice.
Nor yet can more *general* considerations of *expediency*, reference to the good of others, to the greatest good of the greatest number, serve as a guide to the right or a test of the right. We have less foresight as regards others than as regards ourselves; the details involved in the true interest of any community, society, or number of persons, are necessarily more numerous and complicated than those involved in our own well-being; and, if not appetite or desire, the benevolent or malevolent affections are fully as apt to warp our judgment and to misdirect our conduct in the case of others as in our own case.